A:  A 1993 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition researched the diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) of a standard test meal eaten at different times during the day. The scientists were able to demonstrate that if a meal is eaten in the morning, its DIT was significantly higher than when the same meal was eaten in the afternoon. And if the meal was eaten at night, its DIT was the lowest. In other words, if you eat the same meal at night rather than in the morning or afternoon, you lose the benefit of the thermogenic response you would have gotten earlier in the day. You are allowing those calories to be stored as body fat rather than being used to process the food.

So, it's best if you can have the majority of your calories consumed by 6 or 7 p.m. if you eat after that, my advice is stick mostly to protein and green vegetables and limit your intake of saturated fats and carbohydrates. Only 3 percent of fat calories are used for DIT, while 23 percent of carbohydrate calories and 30 percent of protein calories are burned as a result of DIT.

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